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Zero Waste Scotland seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of responsible consumption by promoting the benefits of reuse. This is regularly done through communications campaigns promoting the Revolve programme, actions such as Pass It On Week and European Week for Waste Reduction, and encouraging individuals to reuse items and choose second-hand. Its recent carbon metric publication highlighted the impact of textiles waste.

Zero Waste Scotland is working to support businesses in understanding the benefits of circular business models which support the waste hierarchy, including hosting an upcoming textiles specific webinar.

The Scottish Government does not assess clinical diagnostic interventions.

However, non-invasive liver scans, including transient elastography devices such as FibroScan, are recommended by NICE in primary care settings and are currently used in several NHS Boards throughout Scotland to assess liver disease.

Currently, there is limited evidence on the efficacy of these scans in a community care context. Trials to test the expanded use of non-invasive liver scans are ongoing in both primary care and for populations at higher risk of liver disease in community care.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold information on the number of businesses that have used the Capitalising on Military Talent toolkit.

The information requested on how many staff vacancies there have been in older people's medicine (a) across Scotland and (b) in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, in each of the past five years can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence (vacancy tab - Medical & Dental consultants, Geriatric medicine specialty drop down)

Officials have met with the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) to discuss attracting more people to apply for environmental health courses and to work in local authorities.

The Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health is due to meet with REHIS soon to discuss these themes.

The planting is designed to deliver specific objectives such as landscape integration, screening/shelter, and ecological enhancement etc. However, this does not necessarily mean 100% of the stock planted needs to establish in order to achieve the objectives. A number of annual inspections are carried out by the landscape architect throughout each year of the 5 year establishment period. These inspections determine whether the planting is on course to deliver the intended design outcomes, and can result in remedial actions for the contractor to carry out.

Over 1,000 replacement trees have been planted so far in 2023. Inspections will continue over summer of 2023 to monitor the development of the planting design before deciding what future remedial works and/or replanting may be necessary.

Other remedial works may include applying fertiliser or improving drainage. Fertiliser has already been applied to around 140,000 square metres of tree beds in 2023 to date. Trial removal of tree guards is underway in selected plots and this will be carefully monitored to assess any impact from grazing deer.

The Scottish Government publishes an update on progress on all major capital investment projects every 6 months in its Infrastructure Investment Plan and includes information on the following the projects:

• NHS Grampian - Aberdeen Baird Family Hospital and ANCHOR Centre
• National Waiting Times Centre Board - Hospital Expansion Programme - Phase 2
• NHS Lothian - National Treatment Centre
• NHS Highland – National Treatment Centre
• NHS Forth Valley - National Treatment Centre
• NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde - North East Hub
• NHS Ayrshire & Arran - Foxgrove (National Secure Adolescent Inpatient Service)
• NHS Tayside - Ninewells Electrical Infrastructure Zone 3
• NHS Ayrshire & Arran - National Treatment Centre - Ayrshire & Arran

The full report is published here:

Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021-22 to 2025-26: Major capital projects progress update (September 2022) - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The literature review 'The development of cognitive and emotional maturity in adolescents and its relevance in judicial contexts' was commissioned by the independent Scottish Sentencing Council to inform its work in developing a sentencing guideline on young people. Its conclusions specifically relate to those aspects of adolescents and young people's cognitive and emotional development and maturity which are relevant to judicial decision-making with a particular focus on its relevance to decisions about the sentencing of young people convicted of criminal offences.

As the report focuses specifically on how evidence about the development of cognitive and emotional maturity in adolescents and young adults is relevant to decision making in judicial contexts, the Scottish Government has not undertaken a formal assessment of its findings' relevance in other policy areas.

On 2 January 2023, the number of people waiting for social care support assessment was 7,143. The latest data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) shows that there were 6,706 waiting for a social care support assessment on 17 April 2023.

Please note:

• The demand for a package of care is unknown in advance of the assessment taking place, and some of the people being assessed will not need a package of care.
• Scotland estimates are derived by summing the number of people waiting from the partnerships. This excludes 3 Health and Social Care Partnerships who were unable to supply data.
• Figures are collected each Monday.

Source: Public Health Scotland, Social care – Demand for Care at Home services , published 25 April 2023.

The Scottish Government does not yet have complete YPFF data for the whole period of 2022-23 so we are unable to state the percentage of successful claims across the 12 month period. We expect Health Boards to have provided this data by the end of May 2023.